‘Inglourious Basterds’ History Vs. Fiction: Was Any Of Tarantino’s Film Based On A True Story?

Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine might have been in the “Nazi killing” business, but for the real Inglourious Bastards, killing Nazis was secondary — obtaining information came first. A group of renegade commandos who aren’t hellbent on building up their collection of Nazi scalps just isn’t as appealing to Quentin Tarantino’s body of work though. I’m sure something along the lines of “how will the audience know these motherf*ckers are real badasses if they aren’t cutting off heads?” ran through his mind. Making the Basterds a group of soldiers seeking brutal revenge was obviously a smart move on Tarantino’s part; he does violence and humor incredibly well and it paid off with $300 million at the box office. Hollywood’s an expert at spinning history into blockbuster success, but there’s little of it in Inglourious Basterds — or Italian director Enzo G. Castellari’s 1978 version, The Inglorious Bastards.

The Basterds did exist though, and they pulled off some pretty insane feats of heroism — they just never had a guy nicknamed “the bear” who was bashing Nazi heads with a baseball bat.

With Tarantino’s version celebrating its blood-soaked five-year anniversary this week, it had me wondering where the inspiration for the movie came from, and what sort of mission this group of Jewish commandos embarked upon.

A Band Apart

Nope.

The real Basterds were a British commando force of largely Jewish exiles from Germany and eastern Europe who were dubbed by Winston Churchill as X-Troop (which sounds just as cool as “the basterds” IMO). Only the smartest and bravest were selected, and their knowledge of various European cities and villages was especially vital to the allied forces. Each man was given a British sounding name as it was imperative they not be signaled out as Jewish — Ganz became Grey, Stein became Spencer, and so on.

The commandos might not have been taking Nazi scalps, but each who joined the mission had a terrible backstory of leaving behind friends and family with the Gestapo and wanted to get revenge. Via Daily Mail:

“I craved revenge on the Nazis,” said Colin Anson, who, as Claus Ascher, had witnessed his father being dragged away to Dachau. As a schoolboy in Vienna, Hans Hajos (Ian Harris) was horrified when on the day Hitler’s forces marched into Austria two of his classmates denounced the maths teacher as an anti-Nazi and marched him to prison. “I couldn’t wait to fight the Nazis. I knew they would have killed me and my family if we had stayed in Austria and I hated them.”

Killing wasn’t the unit’s primary objective, but it was something they were specially trained in, and they went through survival and unarmed combat drills in the Welsh mountains that included learning to set booby traps. Along with special skills and new names, the soldiers had to develop entirely new backgrounds since being outed as a Jew would result in being killed instantly or sent to a concentration camp.

Rommel very likely knew exactly who he had and allowed him to leave. I am directly related to him, he took his life to save his family because he was caught in a plot to kill Hitler and he wouldn’t kill non nazi deserters.